Serum Metabolomic Signatures Associated with Disease Severity in Allergic Rhinitis

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p><jats:bold>Background:</jats:bold> Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a global healthcare problem with obscure pathogenesis, and few studies have evaluated the association between AR and metabolomics. The aim of this study was to identify differences in serum metabolomics profiling of AR patients compared to healthy controls and to explore novel biomarkers reflecting disease severity.<jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold> Serum samples were collected form 29 healthy controls and 72 AR patients, including 30 mild AR patients (MAR) and 42 moderate to severe AR patients (MSAR). Metabolomic profiling was performed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) in serum samples. Orthogonal partial least square-discriminate analysis (OPLS-DA) was applied to assess the differences between AR patients and controls and for subgroups based on disease severity. <jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold> These analysis results successfully revealed distinct metabolite signatures which distinguished MAR patients and MSAR patients from health controls. In addition, MSAR patients also could be discriminated from MAR patients basing on their metabolic fingerprints. Most observed metabolite changes were related to pathways associated with glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, pyrimidine metabolism, sphingolipid metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism and fatty acid metabolism. Among these metabolites from dysregulated metabolic pathways, levels of sarcosine, sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), cytidine and linoleic acid significantly correlated with AR total nasal symptom score (TNSS) and visual analogue scale (VAS).<jats:bold>Conclusions: </jats:bold>MSAR patients have a distinctive serum metabolomics profile compared to MAR and health controls. These results suggest that metabolomic profiling may provide novel insights into pathophysiological mechanisms of AR and contribute to its evaluation of disease severity.</jats:p>